There are historic and cultural reasons for differences in attitudes in Scotland and England. As English politics rushes off after UKIP, why would Scotland want to stay in a union with them?

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22) Our political paths are
diverging

As UKIP scraped an
MEP in Scotland, many from the no campaign crowed. One prominent
Labour MP was even spotted at the count celebrating. Here! Final
evidence that Scotland is just as right wing as the rest of the UK!

Reality tells a
different story. Here are the UKIP European vote shares by country:

England: 29%

Wales: 27.5%

Scotland: 10.5%

(Northern
Ireland is a different question all together).

In London, UKIP's
worst English region by some way, they got 18%. Around half of
English voters backed a right wing party (UKIP or the Tories). Around
a quarter of Scots did. Likewise, further right parties together got
more than twice as many votes in England as they got in Scotland.

This only reflects
again what every election for a generation has told us - England
gives many more votes to right wingers than Scotland. It also tells
us something else interesting. This is about more than the toxic Tory
brand.

The no campaign
can't have it both ways. They often say that any claim that Scotland
is more left leaning than England is offensive ethno-nationalism.
They also often say that Scotland ought not to leave the union
because a yes vote would make right wing governments more likely in
rUK – presumably because Scotland is more left wing after all*.

This divergence of
attitude seems to have accelerated since Thatcher broke up the post
war consensus, and seems likely to grow wider still as UKIP do a
victory lap in England. The UK is a political union. Why stay in it
if our politics are diverging?

*As it happens,
there have only been 24 months ever in which England had a Labour
Prime Minister and would probably have had a Tory were it not for
Scotland. Scots do tend to vote left, but there aren't enough of us
to often make a difference.

23) Theology, linguistics, pedagogy
and the law

It is a self
evident truth that different countries have different political
cultures, even though it is equally obvious that people everywhere
start as the same sets of blank canvasses. Do Better Together really
believe that attitudes in Amsterdam and Atlanta are identical?

Opinions in a
country are a product of various historic, cultural, social and
economic factors. You'd expect differences between our economies, for
example, to lead to a difference in attitudes on both sides of the
Tweed. Let me give four other examples of things about Scotland
likely to have shaped the politics of those who live there
differently from those who live in England: religion, linguistics,
pedagogy and the law.

Scotland doesn't
have a state religion. In 1638, we went to war with our rulers to make
sure of that. The Church of Scotland may be the national church, but
unlike the Church of England, it's separate from the government.
That's not the only difference. The Kirk (as it's known) is
relatively democratic in culture, with no Bishops telling people what
to believe.

It's because of
its historic insistence that people are taught to be literate so they
could read the bible for themselves (rather than accepting their
faith from a leader) that Scotland had the first public education
system in the Western world, with a school in every parish and, from
the Middle Ages to the 19th Century, five universities to
England's two. It seems likely that the difference between a
relatively democratic church and a strongly doctrinal one would lead
to differences in attitude, surely?

Likewise
(and this point is stolen from my brother, Gilbert) Scots linguistic
history is very different to that of England. From its foundation,
England has by definition been the land in which the people who speak
English live – the Angles. From the end of the Roman era, Scotland
has been multilingual and multicultural, speaking Scots, Gaelic and
(possibly)
Pictish. When Scots fought for independence, they were fighting
alongside people who spoke different languages from them and who had
different ethnic backgrounds. The Scotland they were fighting for was
defined by its civic institutions and its geography, not as a people
or a race. To this day, there are three official native languages
(English, Scots, Gaelic).

When thinking
about attitudes to multi-lingualism and multi-culturalism, it's no
wonder that the English – who for more than 1000 years have lived
with ethnic nationalism, struggle to understand this Scottish civic
nationalism. None of this is to say that Scotland is immune from
racism – it certainly isn't - nor that there aren't problems with Scottish nationalism. There are. But the fact that, from its foundation
to today, Scotland has been a multi-lingual country, defined by civic
institutions rather than ethnic identity, is surely likely to have
some influence on our understandings of ourselves?

Or what about how
Scotland has also always had a different education system? Schools
and universities, for example, encourage students to learn more
subjects, rather than specialising earlier. Is a whole different pedagogy likely to shape people differently?

Likewise, there's
a different legal system and different laws. Famously, there's no law
of trespass in Scotland – I've often wondered, when visiting the
English countryside, what are the psychosocial impacts of feeling so
hemmed in? Is it any wonder that rural Scotland tends to vote
left/liberal, while rural England tends to vote right/conservative?

My point is this:
like all nations, Scotland developed in its own way. Each of the
above aspects of our distinct history (and many more) must have
somehow influenced our national politics, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. As England veers to the right, it seems reasonable to ask if we want to follow.

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